Here ya go [amagimetals.com]. And this is why backing your currency with something tangible is a good idea. I heard a story once about two guys, each lived on a small island near each other. One had bananas, the other coconuts. Every week they would row out and meet each other and trade bananas for coconuts. One week the guy with coconuts wrote '5' on one and claimed it was now worth 5 bananas.

100 Trillion Zimbabwe Dollars isn't a lot of money. And no money is backed. There is no way to back money with something tangible that doesn't break the value of the tangible item, whether it's gold or seeds. Gold has no more intrinsic value than paper.

Back in ye olden days currency was backed by gold, or other goods. In this modern age of fiat currency currency is backed by the economy of the society which issued it. That is to say, the value of the GBP is that with about six of them (£6) you can get a relatively unskilled minimum wage worker to do an hour's worth of work for you. With £10-20 of them you can get the same hour or so's work from a range of increasingly skilled professionals.

Regardless of the denominations of the bill you hold, people gauge it not by the number of zeros on the paper, but the amount of bread it can buy.

Gold has no "intrinsic" value. The market sets the price, and there have been times and places where iron was more valuable (yes, it took more than a pound of gold to buy a hammer) That reality disproves the fallacy of "intrinsic" to me. What specifically did you object to? I do reject "common sense" as it's generally an excuse for not thinking, but I'm bound by reality.

I seem to recall being told that the economy around Sutter's Mill in 1849 was a bit like that-- locally, everyone had gold, or was expecting to find gold, but mining tools were extremely valuable. Truth be told, though, I may been confusing my memory with The Long Earth [wikipedia.org]

Source: posted historical documents at Independence Mine State Park. This would work for a reference for a doctorate (or master's or school paper), but I'm sure someone will complain that it isn't a real source, as they can't verify it without getting out of bed and walking up the basement stairs. There, a real and verifiable source. Now what? Your assertion that verifying it is too hard, so you'll choose to not believe in reality?

Yes, and the godlbugs that want gold presume it'll hold value in the apocolypse. When there are no industries left, will people still value it? Or will it be worth less than rock because you can at least make tools from rock?

...so, the guy with the bananas ate all but one of his, and said the last one cost five coconuts.

"Fiat" currency is a tool. Broadly, it causes inflation when supply exceeds demand, and deflation when demand exceeds supply. Ideally, a little bit of inflation is good, in that it encourages a moderate level of use (investment, consumption), leading to real economic growth.

A tangible currency made from a limited supply of raw material tends towards deflation, which encourages hoarding, which discourages use, leading to real economic contraction.

I doubt that. A $100 bill is more likely to be circulated in situations where it may be exposed to germs, drugs, disease and whatnot.
Drugs, prostitution, illegal arms and whatnot are very likely to use $100 bills. People buying legitimate goods and services are more likely to use checks, credit or debit cards or smaller denomination bills.

You don't know the proper definition of paper. Cotton paper existed long before wood pulp paper; it lasts for centuries without discoloratoin or deterioration. You can buy cotton paper for your computer printer; with the proper ink or toner you can make documents that might endure until the year 3000.

Yes.
But, not quite.
The original paper was papyrus.
no one would waste cotton for making paper.
You're confusing the current rag process with historic paper making.
paper made 200 years ago does not yellow and fade. Modern manufacturing uses an acid process. When wood pulp was first used to make paper this was not how it was done. Wood pulp paper made without acid lasts.

perhaps you're confusing parchment with paper.
Parchment is animal skin, shaved thin.
It's what the magna carta is written on.

Almost ALL "paper" money is made from some kind of cotton. Not only the US dollar.So "paper" is an invalid option in this poll.

You can make paper out of cotton, or any source of fiber, really. I thought what distinguishes paper from cloth was that cloth is woven, whereas paper is just fibers collected on a screen in random fashion.

Australia prints plastic for themselves and a number of island nations around them. Go plastic!. Plastic is also good, as it's Vegas chips (actually ceramics IIRC, harder to fake, but considered plastic by many).

That's because far too many Americans are still too busy crowing about how they live in the number one country in the world to realize that they aren't anywhere near as free as they ought to be and that overall the dial is moving in the wrong direction. You can't fix a problem you won't acknowledge.

Trust. I want my money to be made of trust. The whole point of money is freeing up barter. I have something you want, you give me something that I can then trade for something I want.

I have to trust that you gave me something other people will accept from me.

Without trust, even gold is just 'shiny crap'.

AC

It already is. Most people just don't realize it. Money, in any form, is only worth what people recognize it to be worth. All of the money in the world isn't worth a thing if you're stuck adrift in a life boat with one other person and that person has the fish.

Not exactly, as gold has intrinsic value due to its rarity. Even if we didn't barter with it, gold would be valued because it is hard to find and is "shiny crap". Because it has value people will always struggle to have it so they can use it to get what they want. Really, trust has nothing to do with it except make you feel mushy about something that has no feeling at all, commerce. Value comes from supply and demand. Evil comes from man. Put the two together and you have the root of all conflict between hu

Without an industrial society (think post-industrial, post-apocalyptic) of any kind, gold and silver are still just 'shiny crap'.

Gold and silver will drop in value, but they'll stop far short of 'shiny crap'. They are still noble metals, and will resist corrosion and oxidation just as well as they always have. As such, a post-apocalyptic society will use them for the same purposes as the pre-industrial societies did: cutlery and plates/bowls etc, and of course decoration.

Precious metals, on the other hand, do not require trust in other human beings (at least when held directly)

Yes they do. Here's why. You have a cow. I buy it from you with a gold coin. You have to trust that the fire I just started in my cabin isn't a smoke signal to bandits, letting them know that I have the cow and a sucker is coming down the road with a gold coin. Now me and my buddies have a cow and a gold coin. You have nothing. You mistakenly trusted that I was an honest dealer, and then when you rode into town you mistakenly believed that the sheriff wasn't in on the whole deal. We're all having whiskey at the bar, laughing it up now. Bar tender! Another round for the poor sod-buster who believed that gold is any more trustworthy than the society that uses it.

Think more along the lines of real estate owned outright compared to investing in a real estate trust fund.

Nice try. Eminent domain. Pollution by an entity that you can't effectively sue, regulated by cronies. Face it. Nothing is risk-free. The best you can do is take reasonable precautions and hope for the best. Insuring the real estate you own directly is reasonable. Believing that the insurance company will pay out easily is just wishful thinking. You have to trust that society will hold them to their contract.

The more I thought about this, the more I realized you don't even need to engage in hypotheticals. When the USA was on a gold standard, people got swindled all the time. The worst thing about "real money" is that when you lose it, it's really gone.

OK fine, counter-party risk. Whatever. If you cherry-pick your risks then you can make anything look better.

This is like saying you're going sail across the Atlantic rather than fly, because there's zero chance of rapid cabin depressurization.

The real world doesn't care about a particular flavor of risk. Most people, quite rationally prefer today's slow, steady erosion of purchasing power. Why? Because when people had stacks of silver and gold in their closet, or at a bank, the chance of 100% loss was very real and not uncommon. People are much more likely to be injured by sudden, catastrophic loss than slow erosion. Think of inflation as a form of insurance which is actually quite nicely priced. There is nothing to stop you from opting out of it either. If you wish, you may still stack silver and gold, as I suspect you may.

Precious metals, on the other hand, do not require trust in other human beings (at least when held directly) -- all you need to do is verify that what you are receiving is authentic (which you can actually do yourself with gold coins). Once you are in possession of physical gold, you are subject only to market forces. In other words, there is absolutely no counterparty risk, and therefore the value of your investment can never go to zero. The value of fiat currency can most certainly go to zero.

So you do not need to trust humans, you just trust in the market, which is run by humans. You lost me. The value can go to zero. There have been localized drops in value to where iron was worth more than gold (and wood, by weight, for good wood).

Strippers love plastic notes as they don't get damaged when they gets wet...

I love plastic notes as they don't get damaged when they get wet - i live in the tropics and often get soaked in an unexpected sudden downpour. The old paper money used to be a real pain when it was wet, but with plastic notes, you just dry them with a towel and they're good as new!

Why favor a restriction to just one option? Renting a car, I want to use plastic. Ordering online, I want to use pure electrons and math. When buying a hot dog and coke at my warehouse club, I want to use bits of paper and metal. When the federal reserve keeps purchasing "debt assets" I want to accumulate small amounts of precious metals and packaged commodities in proportion to the risk. Once the government decides to radically reallocate my precious metals, land and food in the name of the people, acts like I have no human rights, then I want courage, comrades, bullets, fuel, food, a defensible position and broadcasting media.

I do like the new polymer notes that a number of countries are using now but most of the money I use is really just electrons and math since I use credit and debit cards all the time to pay for stuff and then move money around online. The one thing I wonder about with the polymer notes is if they would shrink when heated in the oven like Shrinky Dinks [wikipedia.org] did because having a tiny $1 bill would be awesome.

Precious metals: Bad, unless you like having your business decisions determined by the supply of something your business doesn't actually need to make things.

Base metals: Better than precious metals, but kind of heavy. A close second to paper.

Paper: As in dollar bills. *BEST*. Easy to carry, accepted everywhere, and for the most part anonymous. And for all its flaws, I'd rather have monetary policy set by the Federal Reserve than by the amount of gold governments are able to wrench from dwindling supplies i

Paper: As in dollar bills. *BEST*. Easy to carry, accepted everywhere, and for the most part anonymous. And for all its flaws, I'd rather have monetary policy set by the Federal Reserve than by the amount of gold governments are able to wrench from dwindling supplies in ecologically distressed areas.

Plastic: I'm not sure what this means. Credit cards = electrons & math. If plastic currency, well that's just like paper but not as bendy. Paper preferred.

They could be referring to polymer banknotes [wikipedia.org]. In this case they have all the advantages of paper based money but are harder to counterfeit and much, much more durable (Australian's no longer have to worry about banknotes going through the wash any more). So plastic is better than paper.

...the Triganic Pu has its own very special problems. It exchange rate of eight Ningis to one Pu is simple enough, but since Ningi is a triangular rubber coin six thousand eight hundred miles along each side, no one has ever collected enough to own one Pu. Nigis are not negotiable currency, because Galactibanks refuse to deal in fiddling small change.

Don't want any kind of money that have its own meaning except (and only) a conversion unit between work and goods. That simply moving aluminum between warehouses [nytimes.com] make more "value" in a year than the work of hundreds of persons in all their lives, no matter how much they risk their lives or how much important is for others is a bad symptom.

AND I want the creation right of money in the hands of the government. In this case, working for the government (as representation of society) will create money. This money will have its built-in tax, as it is always created by doing something for society (repairing a road, for example). Also, the value of money is automatically equal to work done for, or goods delivered to, society.

This would mean that government spending would not equal increasing debt towards bankers, but equal helping the economy.

Gold! Willard was hesitating. Money, when it was a matter of electronic exchange, meant nothing.
There was no feeling of either wealth or poverty above a certain level.
The world was a matter of plastic cards and of slots and all the world transferred, transferred, transferred.
Gold was different. It had a feel. Each piece had a weight. Piled together, it had a gleaming beauty.
It was wealth one could appreciate and experience.

Nuclear waste. Sure there may be some downsides, but there are certainly some advantages (It's been a while since I read "The Roentgen Standard" [larryniven.net], but the argument I liked the best was that a strong economy relies on money moving around quickly, and if you make it radioactive, people will be literally dying to get rid of it as fast as they can.)

Does anyone remember that money was invented in Lydia, what is now Turkey, to lubricate the barter of things you actually worked for? It's an abstraction of direct means of sustenance, and it's supposed to represent valuable resources and work.

Entire empires - the Inca, for example - have never used this abstraction. The Inca had an even allotment of labor time in exchange for an even share out of the empire's storehouses. They left us amazing agricultural insights, cities of amazing stonework, and fabulous textiles. Anyone who thinks that stock market derivatives are wealth or that the only alternatives to capitalism are poverty or Joe Stalin can chew on that.

Money as we know it has gotten to be a more devilish abstraction than anything us programming nerds would ever allow. It's gotten to be a tool to make sure that CEOs, shareholders, and bankers have all the clout, and hence, nearly all the take. They get paid in digital money for throwing around digital money to their advantage so much that, if wealth were perfectly equal in America, we'd all make $100,000, have a home paid for, have a college education paid for, or some other configuration of lifestyle. I'm not saying that perfect equality is the way to go, but I'm saying that the way clout has overridden value of labor shows that money is now deeply broken.

Although there are three major units, (The Altairian Dollar, the Flainian Pobble Bead and the Triganic Pu) none of them count. The Altarian Dollar has recently collapsed, (again) the Flainian Pobble Bead is only exchangeble for other Flainian Pobble Beads, and the Triganic Pu has its own very special problems. Its exchange rate of eight Ningis to one Pu is simple enough, but since a Ningi is a triangular rubber coin six thousand eight hundred miles along each side, no one has ever collected enough to own one Pu. Ningis are not negotiable currency, because the Galactibanks refuse to deal in fiddling small change. From this basic premise it is very simple to prove that the Galactibanks are also the product of a deranged imagination.

A little more then that. It can also have value based on use regardless of perception.If My currency is a global standard for a type of trade, that adds actual value to the currency becasue people will want it.

But yeah, most people here have no clue what money actual is, how it's used, or what it actually represents.

Sure, any currency can be manipulated. But some currencies are much more vulnerable than others. Paper money can be manipulated limited only by the numerical value than can be printed upon it. Pay for a cup of coffee with this googleplex dollar bill. Gold is nowhere nearly as manipulable as paper.

a $20 bill isn't twenty actual *dollars* worth of paper...do you get that?

that's virtual

all commodities are the same...even if we had an all gold currency, it would still be **currency** which is by definition virtual...you'd trade an official government made gold (not raw gold that they use for electronics) coin for something like a tomato...still virtual commodity

all of these listed are based on 'math' and it doesn't matter b/c all commodities are virtual and based on perception of value

You have conflated token currencies with commodity currencies - An "IOU" for goods and services at a later date, vs something you can roll up and smoke 'em if you got 'em.

Yes, I think we all agree that Dollars and Bitcoins have value only by popular agreement. Weed nuggets and bales of hay, however, have actual value in their direct use as an intoxicant and as livestock feed, though the latter doesn't make a very good currency for casual use (you can carry around an ounce of weed; you can't carry around a bale of hay).

Gold gets a little fuzzier - Yes, it has a ton of practical uses, but nowhere near the value we ascribe to it. That said, for all of human history, we have valued those pretty little yellow lumps of metal far beyond any inherent usefulness they have. I would put gold somewhere between a commodity and a token, something we inherently value for no good reason. As an animal-world analogy, I view it as similar to the bower bird's obsession for blue things - If bower birds evolve into an advanced civilization complete with token currencies some day, what would they do with their money? They would buy blue things with it. And if you want to get side-tracked with a discussion of such behavior as merely an evolutionarily-sound conspicuous display of resources in excess of those needed to survive for the purpose of attracting a better mate - Remind me what we make most wedding rings out of.;)

this is what all the currency dorks don't understand...any currency can be manipulated b/c that is the nature of currency

For tokens, that holds true. For commodities, it does not. And don't mistake commodities markets for actual commodities - Again, in that case, you don't have a bale of hay, you merely have an IOU for a bale of hay at a later date.

If you took all the dollars and pounds and euros, etc. in bank accounts and compared them to all the dollars and pounds and euros as notes and coins, you'd find there was a huge amount more money in the accounts than in the cash.

Most money exists as records in a computer rather than as physical currency.

Of course people soon became tired of lugging tons of batteries around with them - and having to stand in line to get them charged up at the end of every work-day. Also, measuring the amount of charge transferred between your battery and that of the supermarket when buying a pound of carrots was always a matter of some dispute. Hence there came to be standard batteries with numerical displays on them to show how much charge remained. Places called banques sprang up where you could leave your batteries and read out their charge remotely. Exchanges allowed you to discharge your batteries *here* and to use an exactly equal amount of energy to charge up those of someone on the other side of the planet who wished to provide you with some physical goods. The inconvenience of physically storing all of that electricity made it more efficient for the banques to supply it to people who needed it, in exchange for electricity in return in the future. Over time, nobody was ever sure that the amount of electricity held in the banque was as much as the banque claimed to have stored - or owed to it.

Pretty soon, a shorthand word for "total amount of electricity" was needed - and that quirky unused '$' symbol on everyone's keyboard came to stand for some arbitrary amount of the stuff.